Playing Well with Others in a Creative Era

David E. GoldbergIllinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering EducationUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUrbana, IL 61801deg@illinois.edu

The World is Flat & All That

• Widely asserted that world is flat and returns to creativity are increasing.

• For example:– Tom Friedman, The World is

Flat.– Richard Florida, Rise of the

Creative Class.– Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind.

• But universities haven’t undergone upgrade in a while.

Roadmap

• Creative era as motive for playing well with others. • Conceptual barriers to playing well: envy,

namecalling, and a paradigm. • Organizational/Institutional understanding &

mechanisms aids to playing well: meso-level dot-connectors & pairwork.

• Role for information technology in facilitating organizational change.

• Examples of playing well: ETSI, WPE, iFoundry & OIP.

Cold War Mindset in an Internet World?• In final days of the Vannevar Bush era.• Headed US wartime Office of Scientific

Research and Development.• Report, The Endless Frontier, set stage

for NSF and ongoing funding of scientific research.

• Curriculum, funding, P&T, and institution adapted to this change.

• Hierarchical specialized industrial organizations.

• Universities follow suit with departments & isolated, specialized disciplines.

Vannevar Bush (1890-1974)

The Missed Revolutions

• Changes adopted in industry.• Largely missed in the academy.• We teach, but do not practice what we preach.• Missed revolutions since WW2:

– Quality revolution (teamwork).– Entrepreneurial revolution (startups).– IT revolution (innovation at a distance).

• Teach the “revolutions,” but do not integrate lessons into academy or curriculum.

The Technoeconomics of Now

• From cold war to creative era. How’d we get here?

• Technoeconomic effects:– Transport and

communication improvements.

– Network effects.– Transaction costs.

• Small agile firms connected by communication/transportation networks.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Implications for Creative Era

• Smaller organizations, sticking to knitting, interacting easily with others at a distance.

• Easily find/connect with others at distance.

• A recipe for creative action.• Koestler’s term: bisociation. • Creativity at the intersection of

disparate disciplines.• But all is not well.

Dueling Departments/Disciplines

• Missed revolutions & power of departments/disciplines.

• Most universities as Italian renaissance experience.

• Warring factions in Venice, Rome & Florence.

• Fighting for treasure, loyalty, allegiance.

• Machiavelli would have been at home.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 – 1527)

Conceptual Barriers to Interdisciplinarity

• What makes it hard to cross disciplines?• Misconceptions of “the other” one key.• Will do an analysis of engineering vs.

– Science & math– Humanities & social science

• “Engineering” in large sense as social practice of creating complex technological artifacts for others.

• This includes computer science and all “applied” sciences.

Consider Applied versus Basic Science

• What is engineering relationship to math & science?

• NAS meeting: Some say “engineering is merely applied science.”

• Engineering academics are concerned with “rigor” and “the basics” (math, sci, eng sci).

• But engineering is so much more.• Myth: radar and bomb won WW2.• Engineering envious of math/science.• Especially in the academy.

Relation to Humanities, Arts & SS

• Humanities, arts & social sciences (HASS) increasingly important to engineering.

• Yet, engineering academics use strange words.• Call HASS “soft” as contrasted to “rigorous.”• View engineering as superior to HASS.• We envy scientist/mathematicians and consider ourselves

superior to HASS.• A epistemological classism. • A totem pole in engineering minds.

Trapped in Cold War Paradigm

• “Paradigm” traces to Kuhn’s, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962.

• Engineering is stuck in cold war paradigm.

• Defending “rigorous” curriculum is not an argument.

• Offending HASS as “soft” is namecalling.

• “The basics” include science, but belief in “the basics” not itself scientific. Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996)

Overcoming Conceptual Barriers

• Emphasize common heritage & toolkit.• Model thought with unifying construct.• Recognize that discipline is convenient

organizational grouping, not tribe or religion.• Start linguistically to bridge understanding.

Emphasize Common Toolkit & Heritage

• Missing basics of engineering ties all disciplines.

• Traditional curriculum to senior design, they– Can’t ask questions (Socrates 101).– Can’t label things (Aristotle 101).– Can’t model qualitatively (Aristotle 102,

Hume 101). – Can’t decompose problems (Descartes

101). – Can’t experiment or measure (Locke

101).– Can’t visualize/ideate (daVinci/Monge

101).– Can’t communicate (Newman 101).

• Gifts to civilization dating back ~2500 years. Socrates (470-399 BCE)

Consider Unifying Mental Construct

• 1958 book was called “anti-philosophy” book.

• Used by many as “model” of argumentation.

• Jurisprudential view.• If-then rules with

backing, qualification, & exceptions.

Discipline is not Clan, Religion, or Tribe

• Many disciplines privilege their perspectives and methods.

• Science wars as example.• But smart people in all organized

disciplines probably doing something right.

• First step: toleration of disciplinary difference.

• Actively seeking interpretations that make sense.

• Easy to say, but hard to do.• Start with language.• Toward discipline of interdisciplinarity.

Overcoming Linguistic Naiveté

• Tolerance first step, but language is still a barrier.• Linguistic naiveté: (LN): belief that words have

single, fixed meaning.• Disciplines become disciplines by defining words

in specific ways; encourage LN.• Must understand ways same word can be used in

different disciplines.

Organizational Obstacles & Solutions

• Not much new under the sun: Universities ancient, departments merely old.

• Why stuff everything into one vesicle?• Handy’s gods are at the University.• An analysis of functions, space & time.• Meso-level dot connectors.• Pairwork then network.• The credit assignment problem.

Universities Ancient, Departments Old

• Universities date back to middle ages.

• University of Constantinople, 425 AD.

• Modern departments date to 18th and 19th centuries in French & German models.

• Research journals in 18th century.• Can we sustain activities today

on innovations of two centuries ago?

Theodosius II

Why Put Everything in Departments?

• Department centered resources: money, people, space.

• Department-centered functions:– Identity– Space allocation– Communications– Clerical support– Budget allocation– Teaching assignment– Research evaluation– Hiring, P&T.

• Louisiana Tech, Ruston– Separate admin functions

from academic.– Academic directors:

Administrative leaders, hiring, budget, not necessarily in discipline.

– Program directors: curriculum & advising, usually in discipline.

http://www.slideshare.net/jamesdnelson/innovative-administration-supports-innovative-education

Analyzing Functions, Space, Money & Time

• Inertial analogy. Activities light versus heavy.– Light activities easy to change.– Heavy activities difficult to change.– Hiring, promotion & tenure are heavy.– Space & budget assignment are heavy.– Coordination, innovation, and decision making are

light.• Time: Some activities recur, some are one off.• Space: Some activities benefit from collocation,

others less dependent.

Analyzing Activities Culturally

• Charles Handy, Gods of Management:– Zeus, club culture– Apollo, role culture– Athena, task culture– Dionysus, existential hero

culture• Universities: All is role culture,

but not everything a role. Charles Handy (b. 1932)

Aligning Cultures, Activities & Resources• Different types of institutions will value different

activities.• Highest priority activities should receive heavy

resources.• Central institutions should be aligned with those

activities.• Lighter activities can be placed in the whitespace.• Example: Research institution versus liberal arts

college.• Create named entities, for fixed periods, w/

temporary space, budget.

Create Meso-Level Dot Connectors

• Heavy resources remain in departments.• Getting different groups to play requires some work.• Dot Connector: Meso-level organizational structure• Gather people intellectually, virtually, and physically.• Buying lunch an effective bribe.• Sustaining networks easier in world of digital and

social media.• Examples: ETSI, iFoundry, APIE2.• May benefit from pairwork.

Example: Evolution of ETSI & iFoundry

• ETSI = Engineering & Technology Studies at Illinois.

http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/ETSI • Started as lecture series & website in 2006

following blog post.• Grew to grassroots network of faculty in

engineering, arts, SS, and humanities.• Evolved into iFoundry, Illinois Foundry for

Innovation in Engineering Education.

From Pairwork to Network

• Went from solo to teamwork in the quality revolution. Skipped pairwork.

• Georges Harik, early Google employee: pairs 20x more productive than singletons.

• Get – Large opportunity for complementary

skills.– Low coordination costs.– Maximal opportunity for marginal

creativity.– Effective emotional leveling.

• Great pairwork yields great networks.

Wilbur Wright Orville Wright

Credit Assignment

• How do research, teaching dollars flow to different units?

• Same problem in computer science: credit assignment problem of machine learning.

• How do you set up triple jump in checkers?

• Reinforcement learning (Q-learning) solves problem as iterative approximation to dynamic programming.

• Notion of state critical.• Contributions to state:

– Who hired.– Who invested in startup.– Who provides office.– External reputation.

Lessons from/for the IT Landscape

• Human networks trump electronic networks.• IT does help overcome space & time.• Some inobvious lessons:

– E-mail is dead.– Facebook rules & wikis drool.– Mining, learning, & the future of active collaboration.– Overcoming NIH disease.

E-mail is Dead

• You’re a postmodern. You use e-mail.• Your kids don’t.• Sharethis did study of twentysomethings & there’s demographic

wave moving through.• Computer usage:

– AIM box– Facebook page– Give e-mail password to parents to check.

• What they seek: Immediacy, publc/private persona, relationships & sharing as primary values.

• IT lesson: E-mail is commodity service & not central to creativity-interdisciplinary enhancement.

Why Facebook Rules & Wikis Drool

• Social networking (SN) & Facebook exploded onto scene.• Wiki usage in industry and academy hit and miss (4

dreaded words: “We have a wiki.”).• Key differences:

– Facebook offers rooted public/private identity to individuals & groups emerge from individual interactions.

– Wikis offer largely private group identity & groups are often primary centralized focus.

– Facebook powered enthusiastically by participants (Linkedin, too) & Wikis die when creator loses interest.

– Wikis exhibit tragedy of the commons. • IT lesson. Model future IT after SN model

DISCUS & Active Collaborative Systems

• DISCUS project between Illinois Genetic Algorithms Lab and Automated Learning Group at NCSA.

• Distributed innovation and scalable collaboration in uncertain settings.

• Use text mining, social network analysis, and genetic algorithms to model semantics & networks.

Semantic Visualization w/ KeyGraph

Overcoming NIH Disease

• NIH = not invented here.• Universities are secretive, prideful entities.• Seek competitive advantage by “owning” systems,

content, IP, curricula, etc.• Leads to closed systems & reduction in influence.• Internet is open world. OCW, open-source software,

and commercial sharing sites.• Offer advantages in traffic, convenience & influence.• IT lesson. Move toward openness on multiple fronts,

including use of commercial systems.

Bottom Line

• Have considered– Framework for understanding change.– Human dimensions of creative interdisciplinarity.– Lessons from and for IT landscape.

• Times demand greater support of interdisciplinary research, education, and service.

• Organizational (human) problem comes first.• IT has supporting role for creating mesolevel support

of dot-connectors.• Universities that “get it” will prosper, and those that

don’t risk falling in stature to those that do.

Playing Well with Others in a Creative Era

David E. GoldbergIllinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering EducationUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUrbana, IL 61801deg@illinois.edu